Not everything “Weird Al” Yankovic does is a joke. Today, Yankovic, the greatest novelty-song specialist in pop-music history, has teamed up with Portugal. The Man, the Portland/Alaska rock hitmakers and recent Black Thought collaborators, for something serious.
Today, in honor of Indigenous People’s Day, Portugal. The Man have come out with a new song called “Who’s Gonna Stop Me.” They co-wrote the song with Jeff Bhasker, the Mark Ronson/Kanye West collaborator, and with Paul Williams, the songwriting legend famous for his work with the Carpenters and Barbra Streisand and Brian De Palma and Kermit The Frog. The song features vocals from both Yankovic — who previously remixed the Portugal. The Man songs “Feel It Still” and “Live In The Moment” — and from the Portland rapper the Last Artful Dodgr. It’s a straight-faced, slow-swelling song about trying to survive in a world that doesn’t have a place for you.
For the video, a number of indigenous people appear, and they lip-sync the band’s lyrics. But we also get “Weird Al” Yankovic attempting to embody a coyote. It’s a bold move to work with a comedy superstar on your big message song. Whether or not he’s trying to be funny, Yankovic simply can’t help himself. Check it out below, and read a statement from Portugal. The Man.
Portugal. The Man write:
For time immemorial, the indigenous peoples of the Americas looked to the earth as their spiritual authority. They did not parcel the earth any more than Christians, Muslims, or the Jewish faith would parcel out God. That would be sacrilege. But along came the colonists and they did just that. After the genocide of the indigenous peoples, once our white picket fences and barbwire and border walls were erected, the ancestors of the colonists invented cars, skyscrapers, cheeseburgers, and smartphones. And yet now, at the dawn of the 21st century, mother earth is reacting to the past few hundred years of neglect. The earth is sending out pandemics, fires, hurricanes, and so on. The indigenous say that it’s the earth’s immune system calibrating itself. The indigenous people of the Americas, and the rest of the world, have stewarded their sacred planet for tens of thousands of years of recorded history. The PTM Foundation turns a conscious heart to the ancestral youth of the indigenous elders to shepherd our sacred planet and peoples through this time of difficulty.
For the video for “Who’s Gonna Stop Me” we created a collaboration between indigenous artists, friends, artistic collaborators, “Weird Al” Yankovic, and Indigenous organizations to explore the possibilities of collaboration in this new time. To us “Weird Al” Yankovic has always been a figure of playful boundary-breaking and an inspiration for PTM from inception. In the tradition of the indigenous cultures of the western North American territories, the Coyote represents the trickster and the maker of new worlds; the trickster not only is playful and a comedian but through their playfulness, they connect people. PTM Foundation sees music and art as a similar tool to make new connections and we consider this video to be the beginning of a campaign of many collaborations to come. PTM Foundation strives to forge bridges between the materialist contemporary culture in which we are immersed and the indigenous stewards to whom we strive to give a larger voice.
